Here, Forever
by Nirav
Summary: Santana.  Brittany.  Progression.


**Author's Note:** I wrote this after the bullhonkey that was _Night of Neglect,_ because it was dumb and I wanted to pretend to fix something. Or, y'know, something like that.

* * *

><p><em>I wanted to forgiveI'm trying to forgive/don't leave me here again/I'm with you, forever, the end_ (Breaking Benjamin, "Without You")

When she agreed to have a sit-down with Brittany and Miss Holliday, Santana didn't know she was signing herself up for performing in front of the rest of Glee or getting her heart and esteem trampled into the dirty hallway in front of Brittany's locker. She didn't know that she needed Brittany, that she _wanted_ Brittany, that she had something to lose.

She knows now. Now that Brittany is with Artie and hasn't been in Santana's bed for weeks, now that Santana is walking the halls alone because it hurts too much to be alone with Brittany, now that she's lost control of her thoughts and can't keep them from turning introspective and disgusted and _terrified_. Now that she can't sleep in her room unless all of the lights are on because in the dark, she thinks she can see Brittany making her way out of the flickering shadows.

She tried to hate Brittany for it, to blame her best friend for breaking her heart. Brittany's known her since kindergarten, after all, and even if she can't remember that March in Ohio is cold she's always understood how Santana functions. She's always known that Santana is paranoid and pessimistic and constantly on scanning the horizon for even the possibility of a threat. She saw what the divorce had done to Santana's family, how Dr. Lopez lives in a condo across town and pays alimony and health insurance for Santana and her brother but never speaks to them, how it left a ten-year-old Santana determined to protect herself from ever feeling so worthless again.

Brittany _knew_, and she still chose Artie over Santana. And as much as she wanted to, as hard as she tried, Santana couldn't hate her for it. She tried—oh, she tried, sitting alone and glaring at them and detailing colorful schemes that involved Artie accidentally rolling into a lake—to be angry, to be bitchy, to be spiteful, but all she could see was her best friend with a boy who never stuck up for her, being dragged down by an anchor in the shape of a wheelchair.

So instead, she lies. She tosses off Brittany's confusion and walks with her to class when their routes overlap, sits with her at lunch because Artie's in class, says all the right things when Brittany tells her that Artie and Tina and Mike asked her to join their academic decathlon team. She grinds her teeth and holds on tightly as she feels Brittany slipping further and further into her relationship with Artie. She knows that eventually, Artie will break Brittany's heart, because he's never demonstrated an ounce of respect for anyone but himself in the entire time Santana has known him. She knows it will happen, and she clings to the memory of Brittany's whispered words of pride and possession as tightly as if she were clinging to Brittany herself, and she waits.

* * *

><p><em>I'm drunk, I'm drunkand you're probably on pills/if we've both got the same diseases/it's irrelevant, girl_ (Frightened Rabbit, "Keep Yourself Warm")

She tries to wait for Brittany to figure it out. She joins the celibacy club and doesn't go past third base with Sam, who never complains because God knows Quinn Fabray barely let him hit first.

She wants to wait. When Brittany finally calls it quits with Artie—and Santana refuses to even contemplate the possibility that it won't happen, because if she does then it'll consume her and God knows where the world will be if that happens—Santana wants, more than anything, to be able to say that she _waited_.

But she can't. First it's Sam, who is irritatingly kind and surprisingly adept in bed, because she's lonely and it's been weeks and she can't keep her head on straight enough to know that she doesn't really want to sleep with him and he doesn't really want to sleep with her. But neither of them are where they want to be, or with the person they want, so it's simple and easy and she lets him fuck her in his room, under the Avatar and Star Wars posters lining his walls.

It only happens once with Sam, because he's a good guy and he feels guilty about using her to get over Quinn. He apologizes and expects her to dump him, but she scoffs and rolls her eyes and says that she'll let him use her to make up for the fact that she's going to use him anyways. He smiles a little sadly at her and shakes his head, fine with staying together but refusing to sleep with her again. She blows him off for a day and a half before throwing her hands up in the air and admitting he might have a point.

After that, it's anyone who strikes her fancy. Her cleavage can get her into any bar she wants if she puts some effort into it, and she finds any tall blond girl she can, tossing back shots until her vision blurs and fuzzes around the edges and every swatch of blond hair could be Brittany. She becomes intimately familiar with bathroom walls and darkened alleyways that line the seedy roads near her house, and relearns how to sneak into her room in the early morning hours without waking her mother.

She hadn't had to sneak out since she was thirteen and started half-living with Brittany's family.

She finds herself only halfway drunk one night in a new bar, dancing obscenely with a girl who looks sad under the glaze in her eyes. She lasts through two songs before grabbing the blond by the wrist and dragging her to the bathroom and shoving her against a wall.

"We shouldn't do this," the girl mumbles, even as she yanks Santana's jacket off of her shoulders and shoves it off of her arms. "There's someone—I'm—"

"Stop talking," Santana grinds out, pressing tightly against her, one hand fumbling with a belt buckle. "No one else matters right now."

"But—"

"What is it, then?" Santana snaps, pinning her to the wall with a glare. "You're in love with someone else? Who the hell cares? Maybe I am, too. This isn't about love, this is about sex, so just shut up and let's do this." She softens for the briefest of seconds without meaning to and hates herself for it. "Maybe this is something both of us needs."

She doesn't wait for an answer, pulling the strange girl in for a rough kiss, and she growls appreciatively when she feels teeth making their way down her neck. Eyes rolling back in her head, she lets herself get lost in a fantasy of a different blonde girl.

* * *

><p><em>Never gave a thought to an honorable livingalways had sense enough to lie/it's getting hard to keep pretending/I'm worth your time_ (Yeasayer, "Madder Red")

She tries, before prom, to talk to Brittany about it. Because Brittany was the one who had wanted to talk about it the first time, Brittany was the one who brought Miss Holliday into the mix, Brittany was the one who tried to confront Santana about it for days in the aftermath before taking a hint.

She knows that Artie's already asked Brittany to prom. She had foolishly let herself daydream, concocting pipe dreams of situations where they live somewhere progressive and accepting, where she can take Brittany to prom and not worry about someone throwing a brick through Brittany's window the next day. But she has to wake up eventually, and this is Ohio, and no one is safe from Karofsky's self-loathing or Azimio's ignorance or Quinn's father's perpetuations, so Brittany is going with Artie.

The words stick in her throat at first, and she hates herself for it. Despite hours of laying awake and piecing together the words, the perfect appeasement that would have Brittany letting Artie roll in front of a train, all she can do is mumble out a nigh-incoherent "I'm sorry I suck."

Brittany looks perplexed, as she so often does, and her head tips to the side as she pauses, a book halfway into her locker. "What?"

"I—" Santana says. Her fear is overridden by her frustration. She grits her teeth and squares her shoulders, brow furrowing as she looks everywhere but in Brittany's eyes. "I'm sorry," she says again, more clearly. For everything I screwed up. I know I… I know I messed everything up with us. I get that you don't want to hurt Artie, even if he's a douchebag who doesn't deserve you. And I get that just because he doesn't deserve you, doesn't mean I do, either."

She hates the words coming out of her mouth. These apologies, this complete lack of pride or self-respect, this isn't her. This is beneath her, this humility, but maybe—maybe—if anything was ever worth it, Brittany was.

"I know I screwed up," she says again, finally venturing a glance into Brittany's eyes. "I don't know why I was such a dumbass. But it's just who I am, and I'm trying to—to fix it, to fix me, to make it right."

Brittany's eyes are wide and uncertain, unblinking as she stares Santana down. Santana caves, because this is _Brittany _and she's standing barely a foot away because their lockers are side-by-side and she can feel Brittany's breath beating against her cheek, because it's more than she can handle. She slams her locker shut, not caring that she doesn't have her history textbook, and strides away with as much pride and posture as she can manage.

* * *

><p><em>I am waiting here for moreI am waiting by your door/I am waiting on your back steps_ (Lucinda Williams, "Essence")

She doesn't know how it happens, but somehow, a week before the semester ends, Santana finds herself curled around herself on the steps leading up to the back door to Brittany's house. They never used the front door—the shortest distance between their houses before Santana's parents divorced and Santana moved away had gone from back yard to back yard, and she was so used to it that no one thought twice about the fact that she always used the back door—and she can't place the reasoning or logic that lead to her sitting here, but she can't make herself move.

Brittany comes home almost an hour after Santana has settled into her spot on the steps, and she loops around to the back door on autopilot, digging through her backpack for something. She jerks to a halt when she sees Santana, the movement uncharacteristically uncoordinated.

"I need to say something," Santana says softly. "It's important."

"Okay," Brittany says, apprehension pasted across her face.

Santana doesn't move, not trusting her legs to keep her standing. She clasps her hands together in front of her, fingers tightening painfully around one another, and her brow creases as she tries to string together the thoughts milling about in her head.

"I need you to break up with Artie," she says finally. Her voice is level and flat, neither the jaunty sarcasm she hides behind or the vulnerability of her first confession months earlier present. "I need you to break up with him because I need you. You're Brittany, and you're my best friend, and I need you in my life. I love you, and I'm in love with you, and I don't care if Artie gets hurt because whatever he feels for you is nothing compared to what I do."

She pushes herself to her feet carefully and steps down in front of Brittany. She wishes she'd worn heels, because having to look up to meet Brittany's eyes is making her feel even smaller than she already does.

"You love me," Santana says quietly. "I know you do. And I love you. And we're good together. We're _better_ together. You wouldn't have started all this if it wasn't true."

She's right. She knows she's right. She can see the honesty in Brittany's eyes, the honesty that's always been Brittany's greatest fault and greatest strength, and she _knows_ that this is right.

"We can fix this," she says. "We can make this right."

"I don't know if we can," Brittany says, her voice whisper-soft and almost swallowed up by early summer's humidity.

"We can," Santana says firmly. "We will."

"Are you sure?" It's back—that waver, that trust, that belief that even in her uncertainty, Brittany trusts Santana to keep the promises they make—and it's more of a relief to see than anything Santana's ever witnessed.

"I promise," she says, reaching out with one hand and curling it around Brittany's, fingers gliding together and locking tightly. "This is right."

* * *

><p><em>Thoughts read, unspoken, forever in vowand pieces of memory fall to the ground/I know what I didn't have, so I won't let this go/'cause it's true, I am nothing without you _(Sum 41, "With Me")

Brittany is sprawled across the bed, dead asleep. Santana sits on the stool by her desk, perched precariously with her knees hugged tightly to her chest, and stares at the way that Brittany's blond hair somehow makes the entirety of her black room seem brighter. After weeks of sleeping with all of the lights on, it only took one night with Brittany sprawled atop of her for Santana to stop staring apprehensively at the edges of the shadows.

Their senior year starts in two days. A summer has passed, their thirteenth together and their first _together_. Santana has slept less this summer than any one she can remember, spending night after night determined to stay awake and appreciate the fact that all of the self-loathing and the frustration and the hate she'd felt for months vanishes when she has Brittany's pinkie linked with hers. She doesn't like the person she was a year ago and she hates the person she was without Brittany by her side, and she's determined not to become that again.

Brittany rolls over suddenly, grumbling in her sleep, and grabs Santana's pillow to her chest. The movements shake Santana out of her reverie, and she glances at the clock, grimacing at the late hour. They're meeting Quinn for brunch after church tomorrow, and she needs to sleep if she's going to be able to properly mock her other best friend—she may not have liked the terrified and repressed person she was a year ago, but she'd never be a saint—for her fear of returning to school and a glee club with three ex-boyfriends.

She slides back into bed, climbing over Brittany and easing the pillow out of the blonde's arms carefully. Brittany, tactile even in her sleep, shifts around until she ends up half on top of Santana, breath hot against Santana's neck. Santana stares up at the ceiling, fingers tracing aimlessly along the skin of Brittany's back until she drifts off to sleep.


End file.
